Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

There was the wisdom of a deep moral in that Athenian law, which interdicted a judge of the Areopagus from writing a comedy. Until a grosser age supervened, the Greeks were not inclined to scrutinize the ludicrous side of things. The goddess of the Iliad, who warded off the dart from her favorite, was an apt symbol of the Genius of Civilization, throned on the Acropolis, where Beauty, mother of Excellence, threw down her mantle and intercepted the arrows of every foe. Greek farce was often insolent, but never utterly vicious. While Aristophanes portrayed the foibles of town-life with a caustic hand, he ceased not to keep in view a healthful suburb of gardens in redeeming bloom. As Minerva, with precious elixir, concealed the wrinkles of Ulysses, the age of Pericles performed well its mission of investing every thing venerable and instructive with the most elaborate charms.

All the gentler shapes of fancy that, in the preparatory time, bloomed in the lyrics of Greece, were only flowers unfolding round the aspiring trunk of tragedy, attracted by its superior strength, and sheltered by the majesty of its shade. Æschylus, however triumphant in the field of martial prowess one day, was the next not less ambitious of poetic garlands at the Olympic games. And Thebes was not more gloriously embalmed in the melody of Pindar, than was Colonos through the art of Sophocles, as her melodious thrush in his verse enjoys a perpetual May.

A marked peculiarity of Greek civilization consists in the fact that literature there led all excellence, illustrated and sustained by the harmonious accompaniment of the sister arts. In the East, each work, whatever its kind, stood imperfect and independent of all beside. But in the best age of the best works in the first literary metropolis of the West, it would be nearly, if not quite, impossible to point out a single production that did not refer to the written book, thus furnishing the means of just appreciation, by a comparison with the particular myth or action it was designed to personate. What the writer expressed in words, the correlative artist chanted, painted, sculptured, or built in more material, but not less beautiful forms. The drama most impressively exemplified this fact, using words as a poet, but adding the simultaneous commentary of melody, statuesque motion, pictorial resemblance, and architectural grandeur. This was the absorption of the lyric, the personation of the epic, and the consummation of transcendant dramatic art.

Athens was the inventress of learning, and the first great foundation of republican law. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual power, or like the path of lightning through murky air, at each actual advance humanity may seem to recede, but every such retrogressive movement really accumulates force to carry itself in advance. True, patriotism loves its object to such a degree, that it is ready to incur any sacrifice in favor of those it would benefit, but ceases to be a virtue when it selfishly reclines enamored of its own visage. Narcissus was not the type of national benefactors, but the great law-givers of Sparta and Athens were, when they traveled far, and at great hazards, to gather knowledge for the education of their countrymen.

The illustrious son of Eumonius was the great law-giver of the Doric race, whose institutions have excited much curiosity, but which are involved in an obscurity too dense to be easily removed. He was one of the very few great spirits of Sparta, and like his co-patriot Leonidas, passed through a dubious path from an obscure birth to everlasting fame. In the light of history, the whole life of the latter, especially, lies in a single action, and we can learn nothing authentic of him until the last few days of his career. In the annals of renown, only one proud page is dedicated to the memory of such men, and that contains nothing but an epitaph.

Solon, on the contrary, stands out clearly in the effulgence which under more auspicious influences poured on Attica. He was the second and more successful law-giver of his race, and also stood pre-eminent among the sages of his land. Success first attended him in poetry, and it was the opinion of Plato, that if he had elaborated his compositions with maturer care, they would have equaled the most celebrated productions of the ancients. But the prospective good of nations required him to apply the great endowments he possessed to moral and political purposes; and, according to Plutarch, "he cultivated chiefly that part of philosophy which treats of civil obligations." He pursued commerce, traveled widely, and, in patient research, accumulated those stores of observation and erudition which rendered him an honor to Athens, and a great benefactor to mankind.

History, properly so called, originated with the Greeks, and in natural clearness and vivacity, portraiture of diversified incidents and profound observation of man, eminent success was first by that people attained. The great coryphæus in the prosaic chorus, Herodotus, has been compared to Homer, on account of his manifold charms and transparency of narrative. The depth and comprehensiveness of his knowledge, inquiries, attainments, and commentaries on antiquities in general, excite in competent judges the profoundest astonishment. He is called the father of history, as he was the first to pass from the mere traditions which furnished themes to the poets, and gave dignity to didactic prose as an independent branch of literature.

Human reason is progressive chiefly by virtue of remembrance and language; hence were the Muses beautifully represented as being the daughters of Memory, the only power through which, in the infancy of letters, the harvests of thought could be garnered and preserved. The first national annals were cast under the patronage of the fair Nine, but the Muses of the great Dorian turned to the Ionic dialect as their most fitting vernacular. The civilization of Greece was the first that was unfolded by a natural growth, and its crowning bloom appeared only when every other portion of the wondrous plant had become perfectly matured. It awoke like a joyous infant, under the fairest heavens, and was nourished by all beautifying and ennobling influences. Its life was led apart from exhausting drudgery and effeminate ease, among fair festivals and solemn assemblies, full of healthful exhilaration, innocent curiosity, and confiding faith. Pindar preferred the Doric dialect to his native Æolic, in which many had sung. Like the other leaders of his race, he imitated his predecessors in nothing, but by inventing; he employed the form demanded by the nature of his art, and chose the language with certainty and care, which refused submission to the yoke of authority. The principle, that in each realm of art, whatever is accidental should be excluded, was thoroughly recognized in Greece, where even what fell in by accident, as the chorus of the drama, soon became entirely fused into the chief parts of the action, like an organic member of the whole. The singer of the Iliad was born under the sky of Ionia, and he molded his native dialect forever to epic poetry. The thoughtful Herodotus preferred the same language to the Doric, his native tongue, and employed the Ionic, which was just then putting forth its fairest buds of promise. Thus, the epos of history was twin-born with the epos of poetry. The wanderings of Ulysses, the Argonauts, and primitive heroes, embrace the whole extent of the then known or imagined world, the various manners, countries, and cities included. All these the great annalist works into the rich and variegated picture, which, like a moving panorama, he unfolds to the enraptured gaze. Minuteness, likeness, and strength were requisite as the medium of expression, and not in the old Doric, but in the new Ionic, were these found happily combined. Hence, in historical writing with the Greeks, as in every other department of art, we see that wonderful concord between the substance and the form, that harmony of inward and outward music, which is the first and most indispensable condition of beauty.

Up to this period, history had been composed expressly for recital at the national games, and was couched in a rhetorical transition from the preceding poetical form. The minstrel of the Homeric banquet became the eulogist of his countrymen before applauding thousands at Olympia; but now arose another master who foresaw that his work would survive the forms of society then existing, and he aimed not so much for a transient hearing, as to be perpetually read. The Attic Thucydides had listened to Herodotus in the great presence of the nation, and became inspired with an enthusiasm which bore him to the height of superior excellence. He was cotemporary with Socrates, and under Anaxagoras and Antiphon, matured that compressed eloquence which was to commemorate an age then dawning full of stirring incident. He renounced the episodic movement common to his great predecessor, and instead of supplying a pastime for the present, aspired to portray universal man, and inculcate profound lessons respecting the Providence that rules the world.

Thucydides perfected that form of historical writing which is peculiarly Greek, and was succeeded by Xenophon, whose third remove was clearly beyond the culminating point. Polybius developed the idea of universal disquisition, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was honored as the first of historic critics; but after the fall of freedom, there was little worthy for one either to portray or appreciate.